Cyberpunk put ALL their money into marketing, and they’re heavily investor-pressured into showing the game is better received than it actually is. I still firmly believe that a large percentage of the praise is astroturfing. Especially when they downvote everything negative without a response
Ok here’s a response. I pirated cyberpunk on release fully expecting it to be buggy. I enjoyed bits of it at the time but I stopped because it was too buggy and unpolished.
This is CD Project Red’s track record, but somehow everyone forgot about how bad Witcher 3 was. I expected this 2.0 update eventually and I’m glad they started another marketing push, so that I can know it’s time for the game to actually be ‘done’. Obviously they paid streamers to show the game, that’s no secret. But also it looks genuinely better, just like Witcher 3. So I’ll probably actually buy it next time it goes on sale, after pirating it to see if it’s worth it now.
Meanwhile Starfield looks exactly like the milktoast Skyrim reskin I expected it to be, with nothing really standing out. Bethesda has been slowly comodifying their games since Morrowind -> Oblivion then followed an obvious template since Skyrim. It really shows in their boring designs.
Cyberpunk was trying to do too much, but Starfield isn’t doing enough.
Fair point about starfield, I haven’t played it yet but have heard many negative things.
But your point about cyberpunk, in response to me is “It was too buggy to enjoy on release and I haven’t played the late, updated version” , but you’re glad it’s being marketed on every platform?
That doesn’t do it any favours 😅
I pirated it. It worked, I didn’t run into any bugs like 1.0, and I had fun, on my steam deck no less. I didn’t finish and I might go back to it at some point, but that doesn’t say as much for the game as it does my attention span. I rarely finish games. I’d go as far as to recommend it now based on what I played.
I maintain that I’m glad they were able to fix it and market the improvements earnestly. They made good on their initially bad project, and that should be applauded.